So, the first few times I did NaNoWriMo, I was pretty antisocial about it. Yeah, I friended people I knew in real life so I could watch their progress, but I hadn’t gone out to any of the write-ins for my area or anything like that. It got the job done, but this year is different, and I’m loving it. Not only am I doing the NaNoWriMo class for the Bureau of Fearless Ideas (with the lessons posted here for all ya’ll), but I attended a launch party for the first time last night with some friends and it was epic.

I’ve never managed to write socially before, I can’t do coffee shops or public spaces like that, I just get too distracted people watching, but the launch party was altogether different. People started trickling into the classroom at Shoreline Community College around 10:00 for the 10:30 party, and the room slowly but surely filled, giving us somewhere between 60 and 80 Seattle area novelists in one spot. Before midnight we socialized, plotted, had a costume contest (it was Halloween after all), and symbolically jailed and/or destroyed our inner editors before the starting bell.

I won second place in the costume contest with my Mad Hatter. Mainly cause I brought the tea party with me and kept asking people if they wanted one lump or two with their tea, brandishing that lovely hammer which color coordinated with my skirt.

When the clock struck midnight, it went dead silent in the room. Lobsters and cats, witches and “The Night” were all hunched over their keyboards, furiously writing away, racing to the first daily quota of 1,666 words. The first bingo went up around 12:25. I desperately want to know how they can type that fast, because that’s incredible. It took me 40 minutes to get there and I didn’t pause except to take sips of tea. (There was tea in the duck and sugar in the tea pot, just fyi :D) Until 1 am, the room was silent except for the clicketyclack of the laptop chiclet keyboards and the occasionally, and rapidly more frequent, shouts of bingo as people met their daily quota. It was actually quite the rush and I found myself writing faster (not necessarily better) than I do normally on my own. I am now looking forward to attending various write-ins around the city and working together towards that 50,000 word goal, which seems so much easier to attain when I’m sitting in a room full of people furiously writing towards the same goal.

If you’re in the Seattle area and would like to meet up for some write-ins, I can guarantee I will be at the three public write-ins at the BFI, details below. Until next time, brave adventurers, keep writing!